World Applied Sciences Journal 30 (Innovation Challenges in Multidiciplinary Research & Practice): 414-419, 2014 ISSN 1818-4952 © IDOSI Publications, 2014 DOI: 10.5829/idosi.wasj.2014.30.icmrp.198

Influence of Playing Experience and Coaching Education on Coaching Efficacy among Malaysian Youth Coaches

R.A.J.A. Nurul Jannat and K.E.E. Kang Mea

Universiti Teknologi MARA, Malaysia

Abstract: Introduction: Coaches have the responsibility in guiding the athletes to be successful in their sports performance by helping them to improve their skills. One of the factors that may influence athletes to perform at their optimal level is their beliefs in their coaches ability to guide them during training and competition. Factors such as playing experience and coaching education/course may play a part in the ability of coaches in guiding their athletes. Therefore, the purpose of this study was to identify the relationship between coaches' level of playing experience and coaching courses attended with coaching efficacy among Malaysian youth coaches. Methods: A total of 323 coaches who coached in SUKMA 2012 (sports event that involved young athletes between the age 19 to 21 years old) were selected through purposive sampling participated in this study. Coaching Efficacy Scale (CES) questionnaire was used to measure the coaches coaching efficacy. Results: Overall, Malaysian youth coaches showed that their level of coaching efficacy were high for all the subscales namely character building (M = 7.97, SD =.64), motivation (M = 7.91, SD =.58), technique (M = 7.91, SD =.64) and game strategy (M = 7.84, SD =.60). Furthermore, coaches who have played for high level such as at national level showed that they were skilful in motivating their athletes (p<.05) and in inculcating positive attitude towards their athletes character building (p<.05). Similarly, coaches who have attended higher level of coaching courses showed that they have the ability to motivate their athletes during competition (p<.05). In addition, multiple regression showed that both level of coaching courses attended and level of playing experience can predict the overall coaching efficacy (F (6, 316) = 14.76, p<0.001). Conclusion: In conclusion, coaches who have higher level for both playing experience and coaching course may demonstrate better coaching efficacy in guiding their athletes and hence are able to lead their athletes to a successful performance.

Key words: Coaching efficacy SUKMA Coaching course

INTRODUCTION sports performance by improving the athletes’ basic skills preparations which related to their physical, technical, In recent years, many studies have been conducted tactical and psychological [1, 2]. They were also being to study on coaches abilities in coaching and have referred as the role models and mentors for the youth expanded the knowledge and information regarding the athletes. One of the key elements to be a successful coach coach’s responsibility and abilities. Coaches play an is through their own perception of their ability to lead the important role in sport as they are responsible for athletes through the competitive experience and the belief teaching basic aspects of games. Furthermore, coaches in one’s personal ability is known as self-efficacy [3]. not only have a significant impact on the psychosocial Based on past studies, when the term "efficacy" used development of young athletes, but they also together with a behavior, it would indicate the strength of influence the children’s experience in sport development. confidence in acting out that action with efficiency such Past study stated that coaches have the responsibility as in the term of "coaching efficacy", it shows a coaches’ in guiding the athletes to perform successfully in their belief that he or she can successfully carry out the duties

Corresponding Author: R.A.J.A. Nurul Jannat, Universiti Teknologi MARA, Malaysia.

414 World Appl. Sci. J., 30 (Innovation Challenges in Multidiciplinary Research & Practice): 414-419, 2014 expected efficiently [3, 4]. Furthermore in their study, particularly in youth sport. Therefore, this study has been they reported that it may have a detrimental effect on conducted to gather more information with regard to athletes’ performance if a coach has a low level of Malaysian youth coaches and their coaching efficacy. self-efficacy. Conversely, if the coach has high self-efficacy, it may help in influencing on his or her own Purpose of the Study: The purpose of this study was to performance, as well as the athletes’ performance during identify the relationship between playing experience training and competition. Past study also has shown that and level of coaching course attended with coaching athletes were also more confident in themselves and their efficacy among Malaysian SUKMA 2012 coaches. teams when they believed their coach was a confident leader [5]. There were also numerous studies on coaches’ MATERIALS AND METHODS level of coaching efficacy in various sports environments [3, 6]. Throughout these studies, there were many factors A total of 323 coaches from 14 states who coached revealed that may affect the coaches’ level of coaching in Sukan Malaysia (SUKMA) 2012 volunteered to serve efficacy. as participants in the study. These participants were Based on study by Sullivan and Malete [7], coaching selected through a purposive sampling comprising from efficacy can be divide into four type of subscales which both individual and team sports (athletics, aquatic, are motivation efficacy, technique efficacy, game strategy weightlifting, , gymnastic, hockey, lawn ball, efficacy and character building efficacy. Motivation , , tenpin , , , efficacy can be defined as the coaches’ confident in their , petanque, equestrian and ). Coaching Efficacy ability to influence his or her athletes’ psychological Scale, or CES [3] questionnaire were used to measure states and skills. Technique efficacy is referring to the their coaching efficacy. The reliability for CES coach’s believe on his or her ability to teach skills and questionnaire in this study is 0.91. to diagnose and correct the error made by the athletes. The third subscale which is game strategy efficacy is RESULTS representing the coach’s believe in leading the athletes to perform successfully during competition while for The following analyses were based on the result the last subscale which is character building efficacy, from social science statistical package version 17. it involve with the coach’s ability to affect the athlete’s Descriptive analysis such as frequencies and percentages attitudes such as sportspersonship and positive were calculated to demonstrate the characteristics of attitudes. coaches. Table 1 shows that from all respondents, 74.6% Many factors can affect coaches’ coaching efficacy (n=241) of them are male and 25.4% (n=82) are female. such as their playing experience and coaching courses Furthermore, majority of the coaches were above 45 years attended. In Malaysia, there are three levels (Level 1; old (26.3%; n=85) while the minority is between 31 to 35 beginner, Level 2; intermediate, Level 3; advance) of years old (12.7%; n=41). coaching courses conducted by the National Coaching Licensing Board that can be attended by all sports Table 1: Gender Ages and Marital Status of SUKMA 2012 Coaches. coaches (Malaysian Sport Council, 2008). This program Number of besides serving as a national standard for the recognition Coaches Characteristics coaches (N = 323) Percentage (%) of coaching qualifications, it also provides a systematic Gender Male 241 74.6 coaching education program with purpose of improving Female 82 25.4 the knowledge and skills required by sport coaches. Age (Years) This program has three basic components which are <30 50 15.5 sports science, specific sports coaching and practical 31-35 41 12.7 components. Every coach who attends this course must 36-40 71 22.0 go through all the components before they can be 41-45 76 23.5 certified. Although there were many studies that >45 85 26.3 measure on coaching efficacy, most of these studies were Marital Status completed in western context. There is limited information Single 90 27.9 Married 233 72.1 on the coaching efficacy among Malaysian coaches

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Table 2: Coaches playing and level of participation and level of coaching better in the other three subscales as reflected by the course attended. higher mean score on these three subscales which are Number of motivation efficacy (M = 7.91, SD = 0.58), technique Coaches Characteristics coaches(N = 323) Percentage (%) efficacy (M = 7.91, SD = 0.64) and character building Playing and Level of Participation Did Not Have Experienced In Playing 20 6.2 efficacy (M = 7.97, SD = 0.64). These indicate the SUKMA School Level 37 11.5 2012 coaches were more confident in handling task State Level 181 56.0 such as motivating their athletes, carrying out the National Level 85 26.3 instructional aspects of coaching and developing their Level of Coaching Course Attended athletes' characteristics respectively. Did Not Attend For Coaching Courses 59 18.3 The SUKMA 2012 coaches were measured on the Beginner 96 29.7 Intermediate 114 35.3 relationship between level of playing experience and the Advance 54 16.7 level of coaching course attended with overall coaching efficacy. Hierarchical multiple regression was conducted Table 3: Means and standard deviations of coaching efficacy scores to assess the ability of two control measures (level of Scores M SD coaching courses attended, level of playing experience) Motivation efficacy 7.91 0.58 to predict levels of coaching efficacy (CES). Malete and Technique efficacy 7.91 0.64 Game strategy efficacy 7.84 0.60 Sullivan [7] indicated that coaching education appears Character building efficacy 7.97 0.64 to be a strong predictor of coaching efficacy while Feltz, Total efficacy 7.91 0.56 Hepler, Roman and Paiement, [8] stated that playing experience was a robust predictor of coaching efficacy. Majority of coaches (93.8%; n = 303) have Since the data were categorical innature, dummy coding experienced in playing the sports that they coached in for variables were performed before conducting a multiple SUKMA 2012 event while only 6.2% (n = 20) did not have regression analysis. Preliminary analyses were conducted playing experience in playing the sports that they to ensure no violation of the assumption of normality, coached in SUKMA 2012 event. From the total of coaches linearity, multicolinearity and homoscedasticity. In this who have experience in playing, 56.0% (n = 181) of them study, coaches who never attended to any Malaysian play at state level, 11.5% (n = 37) for school level and Council coaching course act as reference category and 26.3% (n = 85) for national level. Furthermore the findings being coded as 0 while coaches who attended various showed that 81.7% (n = 264) of the respondents have level of Malaysian Council coaching course coded as 1. attended the coaching courses while 18.3% (n = 59) of Similarly for playing experience, coaches who do not have them have not attended Malaysian Sport Council any playing experience in sport that they coached act as coaching course program. From the total of coaches who reference category and coded as 0 while coaches who have attended the coaching courses, 29.7% (n = 96) have various level of playing experience in sport that coaches have beginner level, 35.3% (n = 114) coaches they coached coded as 1. Level of coaching courses have intermediate level and 16.7% (n = 54) coaches have attended was entered at Step 1, explaining 20% (.20 x 100) advance level of coaching course. These results are of the variance in level of coaching efficacy. After entry indicated in Table 2. of the level of playing experience at Step 2, the total Table 3 presented the means and standard variance explained by the model as a whole was 22%, deviations of each subscale in CES questionnaire which is motivation, technique, game strategy and character F(6, 316) = 14.76, p < 0.001. The two control measures building efficacy. The Game Strategy subscale showed explained an additional 2% of the variance in CES. In the the lowest mean score (M = 7.84, SD = 0.60) achieved by final model (step 2), there were five variables that have the coaches and it might indicate that Malaysian SUKMA statistically significant contribution (p < 0.05) with the 2012 coaches were less confident in making decisions intermediate level of coaching course recording a higher with regard to strategies to be implemented during beta value ( =.55, p <.001) than other variables. competitive games compared to other subscales. This also Table 4 showed the variables that been included to indicates that the coaches were less capable in maximizing predict Malaysian SUKMA 2012 coaches’ coaching athletes' potential in competitions and less efficacy in efficacy level. Coaches who have attended various level identifying the strengths and weaknesses of opponent of Malaysian Sport Council coaching course program teams. However, as shown in table 3, the coaches were were compared with coaches who have never attended to

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Table 4: Summary of Hierarchical Regression Analysis for Variables that coaches who have a high degree of coaching efficacy Predicting Level of Coaching Efficacy gave more positive feedback. In addition, when compare Variable B SE B ß to past studies by Fung [10] and Kavussanu et al. [11], Step 1 the score for overall coaching efficacy among the Beginnera*.53 .08 .43 Intermediatea*.65 .08 .55 Malaysian youth coaches were high (Malaysia: 7.91, Advancea*.73 .10 .49 Fung: 6.72, Kavussanu et al.: 7.24). From these review, Step 2 Malaysian youth coaches shows that they have similar Beginnera*.56 .08 .46 capability in coaching and have same potential as others a* Intermediate .64 .08 .55 coaches to be a successful coach. The Malaysian Advancea*.73 .10 .49 coaches believed that self-confidence in coaching is School Levelb .05 .14 .03 State Levelb*.24 .12 .21 important to inspire athletes’ performance during National Levelb*.26 .13 .21 competition. Finding in this present study supported the Note. R22 =.20 for Step 1; R =.22 for Step 2 (p <.05) study by Chiu, et al. [12] and Kuan and Roy [13] which a. Compared to coaches who not attending to coaching course indicated that Malaysian coaches were confident in their b. Compared to coaches who don’t have any playing experience ability of handling coaching tasks. The level of coaching B = Unstandardized Coefficient B; SE B = Standard Error; = Beta efficacy produced most positive outcomes and it was considered to be aligned with the difficulty tasks [7]. that program while for playing experience, coaches who Even though the level of coaching efficacy among have various level of playing experience were compared Malaysian SUKMA coaches is high as demonstrated in with coaches who do not have any playing experience in this study, however, in terms of coaching efficacy the sport they coached. Multiple regression analysis subscales, Malaysian SUKMA coaches have the lowest revealed that coaches who have beginner level of mean score in game strategy efficacy during competitive coaching course were on average.46 points higher in event. This finding was inconsistent with the study by coaching efficacy than those coaches who have never Chiu, et al. [12] and Moen and Federici [14] in which they attended any Malaysian Sport Council coaching course found that Malaysian coaches were competent in game program. Coaches who have intermediate level of strategy efficacy during competitive event. One possible coaching course have coaching efficacy.55 point higher, reason that Malaysian SUKMA coaches have low mean on average, than coaches who have never attended any Malaysian Sport Council coaching course program. score in game strategy efficacy might be due to a lack of Coaches who have advance level of coaching course were real games and matches being organized to expose the on average.49 point higher in coaching efficacy compared coaches to the real competition environment and use their to those coaches who have never attended any ability in making decision during competition. Malaysian Sport Council coaching course program. As for Furthermore, SUKMA event is organized only once every playing experience, coaches who have playing experience two years which gave little opportunity of exposure for at school level have no significant difference in coaching coaches to guide their athletes in real game situations efficacy with coaches who do not have any playing [15]. In addition, most of the youth athletes came from experience in sport they coached. However, coaches who schools where most of the times they were being have playing experience at state or national level were on supervised by school coaches [16]. Therefore, Malaysian average.21 point higher compared to coaches who do not SUKMA coaches were only able to be with their athletes have any playing experience in sport they coached. during centralized training before the event. Due to the short duration during centralized training, this resulted in DISCUSSION a lack of contact between coaches and their athletes. Therefore, coaches have to look for other ways to There were many past studies that used CES improve their game strategy efficacy. For example, developed by Feltz et. al [3] to measure the coach coaches have to organize more real competition or friendly confident or efficacy level and most of the past studies matches so that they can practise their game strategies measured the efficacy level of coaches from school and [17]. Additionally, lecture-type teaching in small group, collegiate coaches. It measure the coaches’ efficacy in discussion on video viewing on real match and learn from carrying duties based on the four subscales of coaching master coach or former coach are some of the possible tasks which are motivation, technique, game strategy and strategies that can be used by the coaches to improve character building. Study by Sullivan and Gee [9] stated their game strategy efficacy.

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The finding in this study also found that Malaysian CONCLUSION SUKMA coaches have highest coaching efficacy in character building subscale as indicated by their mean While further research is paramount to expanding score compared to other three subscales. This suggests the understanding of coaching efficacy in this that Malaysian SUKMA coaches were more inclined environment, this study has provided an additional towards carrying out character building duties and were knowledge of coaching efficacy that relating to Malaysian more efficacious in handling tasks of instilling positive youth coaches. Despite their coaching status, the attitude such as respect for others, fair play during Malaysian youth coaches are aware that playing competition and also instil good moral character [10] experience and attending to coaching courses are because the coaches believe inculcating positive attitude important for them to become a successful coach. toward sport in their athletes will bring to successful In conclusion, while the level of coaching efficacy performance. among Malaysian youth coaches is a generally high, Levels of coaching efficacy can be predicted by however coaches should improve more in their game numerous factors such as gender [18], playing experience strategy efficacy as the score reported was low compared [7, 19], coaching experience coaching education [20, 21] to the other coaching efficacy subscales. Improving the and many more. Findings from this study indicated that game strategy efficacy may help in improve the coaches’ the level of coaching courses attended by the coaches ability to coach better during competition and lead their was a good predictor for the coaches’ level of coaching athletes to a successful performance [22, 23]. efficacy. Previous research by Sullivan, Paquette et al. This study only examined the antecedents of [21] has shown that the attendance of formal coaching Malaysian SUKMA coaches and did not investigate the education programs resulted in changes of coaching impact of the coaching efficacy dimensions. Since past behaviours and also coaching efficacy. Study by Fung studies already stated that coaches who had high [10] stated that attending coaching education programs coaching efficacy used more positive coaching styles, that help in providing mentor teaching for less had more players who were satisfied with their playing experienced coaches would help improve their experiences, had higher winning percentages and had commitment in coaching. Woodman [22] in his study, higher efficacy levels among athletes and teams [12, 23], furthermore, supported that coaching education therefore, it would be interesting to examine these programs were the most effective method in increasing variables on Malaysian coaches to see whether the the coaches’ coaching efficacy and also their outcomes are similar to past studies. competency. Thus, coaching courses attended by the Malaysian SUKMA coaches may have boosted their REFERENCES confidence level in coaching their athletes. While coaching courses are a strong predictor to 1. Nazarudin, B., O. Fauzee, M. Jamalis, K. Geok and coaching efficacy, this study also revealed that the A. Din, 2009. "Coaching leadership styles and athlete combination of attending to coaching courses and satisfaction among Malaysian University Basketball having playing experience are also a strong predictor team," Research Journal of International Studies, to an individual’s level of coaching efficacy. Past 9: 4-11. studies supported that playing experience was a 2. Gerkushenko, G.G., S.V. Sokolova, strong predictor of coaching efficacy because the E.V. Meshcheryakova and J.V. Meshcheryakova, coaches with a lack of coaching experiences may use 2013. "The Influence of Computer Games on their playing experience to provide sport-specific Children’s Play Activity Development," World knowledge of the skills, rules and also strategies on how Applied Sciences Journal, 24: 177-182. the game is played as a basis for coaching efficacy 3. Feltz, D.L., M.A. Chase, S.E. Moritz and P.J. Sullivan, beliefs [3, 5]. Sullivan, Gee et al. [19] also stated that 1999. "A conceptual model of coaching efficacy: coaches’ playing experience was a unique source of Preliminary investigation and instrument coaching efficacy. development," Journal of Educational Psychology, This study presented a regression result to predict 91: 765-776. the Malaysian coaching efficacy that can help the sports 4. Khaustov, S. and I. Ilyin, 2013. "Muscular Strength organization committee to find the most suitable coaches Training Technique Peculiarities in Weightlifters to develop and coach Malaysian athletes in future Preparation," Middle-East Journal of Scientific competitive sports events. Research, 17: 382-386.

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